Evolution and Human Nature

2011-2012

By Juliana Rosati

Anthropologist Richard Sosis drew a striking connection between religious ritual and cooperative behavior when he co-led a study of Israeli communes known as kibbutzim. The study reported that cooperation within the communities appeared to be the greatest among men who practiced communal prayer. But that was not its only memorable result.

Sosis received a phone call from a woman living in a religious settlement who wondered if the women in her community should adopt a communal prayer practice in order to improve their own cooperation. “I listened and I said, ‘You know, that’s certainly a fair interpretation of the results; however, with one study I wouldn’t want to draw any conclusions. I certainly wouldn’t want to change the social structure of any community based on one study, and of course we have no idea what would be the effects of making a change,’” said Sosis, a professor at the University of Connecticut.

Sosis has encountered such questions frequently during the course of more than a decade studying religion as a scientist. As one of thirteen scholars selected for the resident research team of CTI’s 2012–2013 Inquiry on Evolution and Human Nature, he hopes a year working with theologians, scholars of religion, and fellow scientists will help him gain new insight on how to address questions from lay people and religious leaders curious about the implications of his research for their lives or congregations.

Now in residence at the Center, the 2012–2013 cohort is the first of three teams that will conduct yearlong, themed interdisciplinary inquiries during CTI’s New Approaches in Theological Inquiry—a project that offers eight Research Fellowships of up to $70,000 and two Postdoctoral Fellowships of $40,000 each year through a $3.5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

“As a scientist working on a particular topic, I don’t often consider how my results are relevant to people’s lives,” said Sosis. “But I’ve become intrigued realizing that these results do speak to people. I’m looking forward to having the discussion with theologians in particular to help navigate what the implications are.”

According to the 2012–2013 inquiry leaders, Senior Research Fellows Celia Deane-Drummond and Dominic Johnson, Sosis’s interest in the perspectives of scholars from other fields is typical of the research team and essential to its mission of generating dialogue between theology and science. “All of the theologians have a particular interest in science for their research, and it happens the other way around as well, that the scientists have a particular interest in talking to theologians,” Deane-Drummond said. “The projects that have been selected from a huge array of applications are those that really will benefit from being undertaken at CTI.” A theology professor at the University of Notre Dame and a former plant physiologist, Deane-Drummond, like Johnson, brings the expertise of more than one discipline to the task of leading the inquiry.

“It really is a dream team,” said Johnson, a University of Oxford professor of international relations who applies his training in evolutionary biology to politics, international relations, and religion. “Exploring the links between evolution and theology would be a tough challenge for any group of scholars, but we have one of the best conceivable collections of individuals and expertise to tackle it. The fellows are exceptional in their own right as scholars, but also in their proven ability to reach across disciplinary boundaries to generate new insights.”

Almost evenly split between science and theology or religious studies, the current team marks an important milestone in CTI’s history and interdisciplinary vision for theology.

“It was the founding intention of the Center that we would have such a mixed group of scholars in residence,” said CTI Director William Storrar. “We’ve always had individual scientists, social scientists, and scholars in the humanities study at CTI, in addition to theologians, but this is the first time that we have convened a balanced group of theologians and scholars in other fields working together on a common topic for the year.”

The scholars will spend the year addressing the theme of Evolution and Human Nature through major individual research projects, alternating time spent alone writing and thinking with weekly team conversations. “We hope to have a series of books and peer-reviewed articles offering fresh and original thinking on the topic,” said Storrar. “There will be significant published and intellectual outputs.” Through this and the other New Approaches inquiries, CTI aims to produce a new cohort of theologians and scholars in other fields who are trained in interdisciplinary inquiry and generate ideas with a global impact. Judging from the success of the application process and the interdisciplinary commitments of the scholars, the current year promises to fulfill these expectations, producing fascinating conversations and research that will advance thinking about human nature.

A Formidable Pool of Applicants

The team’s arrival at CTI in September of 2012 signified not only the launch of the groundbreaking three-year New Approaches project, but also the conclusion of a successful application and selection process in which the Center chose from a pool that included many scientists as well as scholars of theology and religion.

“It was a formidable pool of applicants, and the tricky task of narrowing it down to the current team was exactly the kind of problem one hopes to have with such projects,” said Johnson.

Following the application period in the fall of 2011, Johnson and Deane-Drummond participated in the selection process with Storrar and the Center’s Academic Advisory Panel, a group of distinguished scholars that contributes to the evaluation of applications each year.

“We maintained our usual criteria—outstanding scholars doing original research, contributing to our mission of fostering theological inquiry through interdisciplinary conversation and collaboration,” said Storrar. “But we benefited from the expertise of our Senior Research Fellows on the inquiry topic."

The resulting group of scholars, which the Center officially announced in June of 2012, boasts expertise in theology, religious studies, anthropology, biology, and philosophy, and representation from Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

“We’re getting a full range of skills, and also a large range of different countries and nations represented,” said Deane-Drummond. “It’s a truly international team, which I’m very excited about.”

When asked what attracted them to the Inquiry on Evolution and Human Nature, team members cite their enthusiasm for the topic and the environment of CTI.

“I didn’t have to think, ‘How can I fit my project into it?’ It really was exactly what I spend my life doing and thinking about—how can we think theologically given the breadth of human evolution?” said theologian Nicola Hoggard-Creegan of Laidlaw College in New Zealand.

Postdoctoral Fellow Hillary Lenfesty, a cognitive anthropologist at the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen’s University Belfast in the United Kingdom, likewise found resonance in the topic. “Considering my background in the social sciences, religion, and most recently the cognitive science of religion, I was drawn to the program because of its interdisciplinary approach and especially its concern with the topics of science and religion,” she said.

Theologian Markus Mühling of Leuphana University in Germany noted that CTI offers a welcome opportunity for scholars to focus on research and build relationships with colleagues without the everyday pressures of academic life. “CTI is a very extraordinary institution for research in the field of theology,” he said. “Perhaps it’s the only institution where academics from different fields can both do research and live more or less closely together. In the post of a professor, you’re so occupied with publishing and teaching that sometimes it seems that academic work is in danger of becoming an individualistic and lonesome endeavor.”

Hoggard-Creegan agreed, “Trying to do research is always very difficult—you’re expected to do it, but it’s hard to push it in between the gaps. That’s why this is such an extraordinary opportunity—to be in an environment for nine months where you’re not expected to do anything except think and write and talk to other people who are doing the same thing. It’s wonderful.”

For anthropologist Sosis, the opportunity to work closely with theologians and scholars of religion is one he does not have at his own university. “That might be the most exciting thing for me,” he said. “I’m at a public university. We do not have a religious studies department or a department of theology, and although I’ve been working on this topic for more than a decade, I have not had the opportunity to interact regularly with scholars in those fields.”

With ten Research Fellows supported by the Templeton Foundation grant and additional funding from CTI, along with two Senior Research Fellows and two Postdoctoral Fellows supported by Templeton funding, the inquiry will bring most team members to CTI for a year in residence, while a few will attend for a semester each.

In addition to Hoggard-Creegan and Mühling, the representatives of theology, religious studies, and philosophy are Research Fellows Conor Cunningham (theology and philosophy, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom), Jan-Olav Henriksen (theology and philosophy, Norwegian School of Theology, Norway), Eugene Rogers (religious studies, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, United States), Robert Song (theology and ethics, University of Durham, United Kingdom), and Postdoctoral Fellow Aku Visala (theology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom and University of Helsinki, Finland).

Along with Sosis and Lenfesty, three other scientists are in the team: Lee Cronk (anthropology, Rutgers University, United States), Agustín Fuentes (anthropology, University of Notre Dame, United States), and Jeffrey Schloss (biology, Westmont College, United States).

Diverse Interests and Approaches

Are our capabilities as humans best explained by innate or learned influences? This classic question of nature versus nurture is at the core of the Inquiry on Evolution and Human Nature. Today, new scientific research poses complex challenges for those seeking to understand how genetics, evolution, society, education, and other factors shape who we are and how our responsibilities, behavior, experience, and beliefs may be understood. To address these issues in relation to religion and theological concepts, the scholars selected for the inquiry at CTI have proposed a variety of projects.

“We wanted a whole range of perspectives, and I think that will be the best way of guaranteeing progress and advancing the field,” said Johnson. “You might even make a biological analogy to genetic diversity—by starting with a lot of diversity in what we’re interested in and our approaches, we might expect a more rigorous, adaptable outcome in terms of our understanding at the end.”

Theologian Nicola Hoggard-Creegan has chosen to spend the year examining the limitations of human freedom in light of the physical capabilities of our species. The topic has relevance for contexts such as prisons, schools, churches, and parenting.

“I think questions of human freedom lie behind a lot of the ways in which societies judge people,” she said. “There is an ongoing divide between people who think that we have the tendency towards aggression, for example, and those who think that we don’t. I’m inclined to believe that human nature is at least very vulnerable, so that slight problems biologically or genetically or environmentally really destabilize us.”

Hoggard-Creegan intends to examine scientific evidence for the limitations of human freedom—such as research that links violent behavior to dietary factors—while also investigating what she calls “points of resistance” to theories of limited freedom, such as the ability of the mind to reflect upon itself, and human capacities for altruism and virtue.

“I think that theological arguments about limits to human freedom are right,” said Hoggard-Creegan, who completed an undergraduate degree in mathematics and three years of medical study prior to obtaining her doctorate in theology. “But there is this mysterious extra dimension to human nature, to human willing—it’s this persistent feeling we have, that we have got some level of freedom.”

In her analysis of human capabilities, Hoggard-Creegan will address the extent to which humans share the biological limitations of other mammals, attempting to incorporate evolutionary history into understandings of how humans can be said to be in the image of God. Deane-Drummond noted, “This is an important dimension of the project as a whole, as it touches on fundamental continuities and differences between human beings and our nearest relatives. Many theological scholars, myself included, are working on different aspects of this topic.”

The scientific approach that anthropologist Richard Sosis will undertake at CTI inquires into the nature versus nurture question from another angle, asking whether religion is a natural and inevitable result of the structure of the human brain, as some cognitive scientists have argued. Sosis plans to question this theory, known as the “naturalness of religion thesis,” by examining the role of culture in shaping religious rituals.

“The seeds of religion are indeed in our cognitive functioning, but what we actually recognize as religion seems to be built on much cultural learning,” he said. “Cognition is clearly important, but there are other aspects necessary for generating this full system that we think of as religion.”

“What I find interesting about his work is that he focuses on ritual rather than beliefs—what people do, rather than what they believe. Whereas my work has been all about what they believe,” said Johnson “And I’ve never quite got to grips with the questions this raises. Are they alternative theories? Do they need each other? Do we have to have theories which incorporate both behavior and beliefs? Is one more important than the other in different settings?

Like Sosis, theologian Markus Mühling will address biological understandings of religion. His project will focus specifically on the ways in which religious experience has been defined in neuroscientific studies. According to Mühling, research that correlates brain activity with unusual occurrences—such as direct experiences of God and near-death experiences—is problematic from a theological standpoint.

“This new biological account of religious experience focuses on extraordinary experiences, not on everyday experiences,” Mühling said. “That means that the mystic experience becomes a model from which religious experience as a whole is understood. But in the realm of different religions, especially Christianity, that’s only one part of religious experience. All things in the world, theologically speaking, are created, and that means that religion has to do with everything which we experience."

According to Deane-Drummond, Mühling’s work will help to illuminate underlying presuppositions about human nature that may otherwise be taken for granted. “Such commitments are not necessarily obvious to the casual observer or even the scientists themselves,” she said.

Johnson agreed that such analysis is necessary. “We in the evolutionary study of religion tend to explore ideas and questions that arise from within our own fields, and make large assumptions or simplifications about how they relate to religions and theology in the real world,” he said. “Having theologians literally next door will make it impossible to get away with this and instead compel us to integrate scholarship from both disciplines much more rigorously.”

Mühling, who may explore CTI’s contacts with neuroscientists in the Princeton academic community and beyond, hopes that his research will encourage a two-way dialogue in which neuroscience and theology can learn from each other and identify not only the differences between their findings, but also the similarities.

“In Germany most theologians try to communicate with neuroscientists simply with an antipathetic attitude,” he said. “I would say that’s not a very good presupposition for a dialogue. There are similarities between the fields which are not observed at the moment in theology at all.”

Cognitive anthropologist Hillary Lenfesty, a Postdoctoral Fellow, will address the role of nature and nurture in producing the inquiry topic itself, asking why humans are able to think about the concept of human nature in the first place. Her work will address specific theological perspectives on human nature in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

“The question of what makes us fundamentally human has been asked for thousands and thousands of years, and there have been a lot of different answers,” said Lenfesty, who studied for two years at Princeton Theological Seminary before pursuing her PhD in anthropology. “The fact that it’s been asked for so long, and across cultures, throughout time raises the question, ‘What is it that over time and over space enables us to keep asking it?’ And my proposal answers that question from the perspective that there are universal characteristics of the human mind that shape the kinds of questions we ask about ourselves.”

According to Lenfesty, psychological mechanisms known as cognitive biases may reveal how ideas about human nature—including theological concepts such as sin—are facilitated or constrained by the ways our minds work. One of these biases, known as psychological essentialism, holds that members of a category all share an underlying true nature or invisible essence that accounts for their external similarities.

“I’m interested in the psychological mechanisms that enable us to come up with concepts about things that we can’t see,” said Lenfesty. Her project aims to discern how such workings of the human brain allow individuals to comprehend, evaluate, and commit to specific theological views.

Of Lenfesty, Johnson said, “To me she seems well ahead of many scientists in really trying to take theological questions seriously and square those with a lot of the work in evolutionary theory."

As they pursue their individual research projects, Hoggard-Creegan, Sosis, Mühling, and Lenfesty, along with their eight teammates and two leaders, will take turns presenting works in progress at weekly conversations known as the resident Colloquium.

“I think that the intellectual quality will be sharpened and enhanced by having these discussions, and they will open up new questions that perhaps we don’t necessarily think of on our own,” said Deane-Drummond, who as a theologian and former laboratory scientist looks forward to learning from other scientists. “The scientists will perhaps bring up issues which may not necessarily be written down in scientific journals, but which they’ve found from their own experience selecting a particular way of thinking about human nature,” she said. “I’m interested in that as a theologian—in the way science and values come together."

A Conversation with Impact

By the end of the Inquiry on Evolution and Human Nature, Research Fellows should be well on their way to the successful completion of their individual plans for publication. Postdoctoral Fellows, in addition to producing their own projects, will have assisted with the research of Deane-Drummond and Johnson, benefiting from their mentoring and knowledge. Collaborations and additional initiatives will no doubt arise, such as one that Deane-Drummond already plans—as co-editor of a new academic journal, Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences, she will encourage inquiry participants to submit articles for a special issue on evolution and human nature. Yet perhaps the greatest impact of the year will be on the thinking of the scholars themselves.

“Because we selected scholars who are looking for an interdisciplinary conversation for their work, we hope and expect that the experience of working together in residence at CTI will have a lasting impact on their future endeavors,” said Storrar.

With such a universal topic, the inquiry has the potential to inspire the participants not only as scholars, but also as human beings.

“I think that one of the inevitable results of doing either science or theology is the process of reflection that results from thinking about ourselves as members of the human species,” said Lenfesty. “The scientist is as much of a human, and sometimes as much of a philosopher, as the theologian. I think that when anyone is given the opportunity to think and talk about these things seriously, the results will build our individual empathetic capacities and patience for others who may think differently from us. These kinds of skills will, hopefully, have their positive effects elsewhere long after we end our time together at CTI."